Top 10 Craziest Crypto Stories of 2021 Brazen civil engineering projects, bizarre NFT releases and blatant scams: we recap this year’s craziest news stories from the crypto world. Between the skyrocketing popularity of meme coins and NFTs, a certain Central American country choosing to fully embrace Bitcoin and the ever-more elaborate scams, the crypto industry has seen some wild stories in 2021. Some were stupidly funny, others downright depressing and the select few — weirdly uplifting, and today we will take a look at the best ones. So without much ado, here are the ten crazies crypto stories of 2021, in no particular order: Melania Trump’s NFT Collection Results in Backlash While Crazy Frog Is Forced to Drop NFTs Against His Will While NFTs are reaching ever-higher levels of popularity, they are simultaneously becoming the target of more and more criticism for the often meaningless, exploitative or even downright criminal nature of several new NFT releases. Underscoring the current craziness of the market of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), two new announcements were made last week which could truly boggle the mind of someone who hasn’t been closely following the industry for the past several months. Melania Trump, the wife of former POTUS Donald Trump, has decided to publish her “Melania’s Vision” collection, resulting in some backlash. Each token is accompanied by a digital image of a watercolor painting of the former first lady’s “cobalt blue” eyes, as well as an audio “message of hope” by Mrs. Trump. An undisclosed portion of the proceeds from the NFT sale is slated to be donated to a charity cause for children aging out of the United States’ foster care system — with some commenters asking why didn’t Mrs. Trump choose to donate all of the earnings. Others have criticized the apparent lack of meaning behind specifically choosing the NFT format for this particular art sale. Another, even more bizarre story, involves Crazy Frog, a Swedish CGI musician character whose Axel F music video is currently the 25th most-watched video on YouTube at over three billion views. After briefly achieving international stardom, Crazy Frog had disappeared from the scene for more than a decade, only to reemerge a couple of weeks ago with a new single and an announcement of an NFT drop, the latter of which was almost universally criticized — with some commenters choosing to go as far as to send death threats to the unfortunate frog. As it turns out, the artists behind Crazy Frog actually had no personal desire to announce the sale of the controversial digital assets. Instead, they were apparently pressured into it by their producer, who is all but holding the cartoon frog hostage. Snoop Dogg Reveals He’s the Twitter-Famous NFT Influencer Cozomo de’ Medici In other NFT-themed celebrity stories, it was revealed this September that the Cozomo de’ Medici account on Twitter is run by none other than the popular rapper and entrepreneur Snoop Dogg. Cozomo de Medici is a pseudonymous Twitter user who shares “tales & insights'' from the NFT industry. Besides tweeting memes and weighing in on discussions about digital assets and art, Cozomo also frequently showcases the NFTs that they own personally. Their combined portfolio of collectibles was estimated at about $17 million as of Sept. 25. The account is fairly popular as far as crypto influencers go — having amassed over 143 thousand followers as of Dec. 23 — but until recently, the person behind it was a complete enigma. Cozomo had teased a reveal on Sept. 17, tweeting: “I have been thinking a lot about this, and have realized my real life celebrity status may bring many welcomed eyeballs to NFT.” The actual reveal has never been made by Cozomo themselves, however, three days later Snoop Dogg had tweeted from his own official account: “I am @CozomoMedici” Although it might appear crazy to some, the revelation should not come as a total surprise to those who have been paying attention to...
